A familiar face heads to Sacramento

VIC LEIPZIG AND LOU MURRAY

One of the most influential people in Huntington Beach has a new job.

Lucy Dunn,vice president of Hearthside Homes, has just been appointed

by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the state’s new director of the

Department of Housing and Community Development. In this position,

Dunn will oversee state housing programs.

Dunn is certainly well qualified for the job. She is vice

president of the California Building Industry Assn., a director of

the National Assn. of Home Builders and a member of the Urban Land

Institute. More importantly, Dunn has headed the residential

development project at Bolsa Chica for more than a decade.

A series of corporate entities has owned the Bolsa Chica property

over the past 30 years: Signal-Landmark, Koll Co., and now Hearthside

Homes. Dunn has endured throughout all of those corporate name

changes, first as an attorney for Signal Landmark, then as a project

manager for the Bolsa Chica development. She has been a fixture

during the long process of the Bolsa Chica saga, an asset almost as

valuable as the real estate itself.

During this time, she has had forceful adversaries as well as

supporters. Lou and I have long been opponents of her development

project, but we have never felt the personal hostility toward her

that some have. In fact, we have a great deal of respect for her.

Dunn is an intelligent and dynamic individual and more

environmentally minded than most believe. She will be an asset to the

Schwarzenegger administration.

How will Hearthside Homes get along without her? Perhaps they

won’t have to worry about that for long. Negotiations between

Hearthside and the state of California are said by insiders to be

moving forward quickly. Now that the real estate appraisals are

completed, it is possible that Hearthside and the state will soon

announce that they have struck a deal for state acquisition of

Hearthside’s property on the Bolsa Chica mesa.

Local environmentalists have long been at odds with the Bolsa

Chica landowner. Oddly enough, these opponents found themselves on

the same side of the fence two years ago when they both supported

Proposition 50. That statewide bond measure included funds that could

be used to buy out Hearthside so the mesa open space could be

preserved and ultimately restored for its habitat value.

If the state were to buy out Hearthside lock, stock and barrel,

the deal would bring us very close to the end of the long-playing

Bolsa Chica saga of environmental activism versus urban development.

There would remain only one significant piece of Bolsa Chica real

estate not in public ownership, the Shea Homes parcel that runs up to

Graham Street.

But even if the state were to buy only the lower bench of the

Bolsa mesa, a more likely scenario, the outcome would also be a big

step toward final closure. At that point, there would be little

remaining basis for continued hope that the state, or any other

public agency, would buy the upper bench. Hearthside would then

proceed to process its application for building permits on the upper

bench, and would probably get them. Hearthside would build in short

order and again that chapter of history would be closed, although

without quite as happy an ending.

One thing is clear. Dunn has impressed the Schwarzenegger

administration. Her views on housing issues in California will be

influential. Will she be able to influence administration

decision-making about Bolsa Chica? Our guess is no. We expect that an

acquisition decision will become public fairly soon, meaning that

there won’t be much left to decide. And if we’re wrong about

acquisition (and the crystal ball has let us down once or twice

before), her obvious conflict of interest would make it difficult for

her to play much of a role in her former employer’s business dealings

with her new employer.

There is yet one more twist in this oddity-ridden story. It seems

that the Department of Housing and Community Development is part of

the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, and that that agency

is one of the groups with a nonvoting seat on the Coastal Commission.

In an irony that makes our heads spin, it is even conceivable that

some day soon we will see Lucy Dunn sitting on the California Coastal

Commission.

In regard to statewide housing policy, we have heard Dunn

repeatedly sing the praises of infill housing development. We hope

that in office she will remember that infill is vastly better than

continued sprawl at the periphery of metropolitan areas. We can only

hope that she agrees with environmentalists that California’s highest

priority is rehabilitation of the countless substandard housing units

that exist in every city and town of the state. If we can make

existing units livable, we can minimize the need for continued

sprawl.

While Dunn’s appointment won’t become final until confirmation by

the Senate, there should be no obstacles. We look forward to seeing

Dunn in action as a public servant. She will do a fine job. And we

look forward to final resolution of the long-standing Bolsa Chica

saga, preferably with preservation of all of the remaining open

space.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].